Work + Workouts

Hi! I hope you had a wonderful week and are enjoying your weekend!

Our second tax season (you know, the one they don’t tell you about when you are in school) is in full swing, so this was a busier than normal work week for me. Thankfully, it was also really productive! There is something very satisfying about getting lots of returns finalized. Nerd alert.

We had our pictures made for our new website a couple of weeks ago. Here is the finished product! I am so thankful for my work family.

In other news … marathon training is officially underway!

Technically this was the 3rd week of training, but I wasn’t really counting the first two weeks as marathon training in my mind. Mentally I felt like I needed a little bit of a break from “official” training. Since there wasn’t an actual race at the end of my last training cycle, the cycle didn’t really have formal closure. I still ran 31 miles, but it wasn’t a race so it just didn’t *feel* the same.

I decided (in my head) that this week was going to be the first official week of training. My head and the rest of my body were apparently on different wave lengths though, because the week was definitely less than stellar.

I started the week off with some sort of weird stomach bug, which wasn’t really ideal. I was supposed to do a 3 X 2 mile workout Tuesday, but I decided to give myself an extra day to recover and I ended up doing that workout Wednesday instead.

The schedule called for a 2 mile warm up, followed by 3 X 2 mile repeats with a goal range of 6:15 to 6:25 pace and a 2 mile cool down. I typically do these longer repeat workouts on the treadmill, but Daniel agreed to do the workout with me this week so we *attempted* it outside. It didn’t go exactly as planned. You win some, you lose some.

My average paces were 6:25, 6:40 and 7:00.

I kind of let my perfectionist, overly self-critical tendencies get the best of me and I was definitely a bit discouraged after this workout. It is so easy to let a bad workout get in your head and make you feel like you have (oh.my.gosh) lost all of your fitness (every single bit of it). On the other hand, it is also easy to not give yourself credit for the good workouts. It’s just like meh, that’s what was expected of me (which is definitely not the best outlook).

There are positive and negative takeaways from every workout and race that we do. Sometimes you just have to do a bit more digging to find those positives. In hindsight, here are a few positives …

1) I did the workout outside (meaning that it was dark, it was humid and there were hills … how rude). I have to learn to give up the security of the treadmill every now and then. I don’t mean security in a safety sense, but rather the security of having the treadmill control and maintain the pace for me. The treadmill is a wonderful pacer and it is a good tool to utilize sometimes (especially if you need a confidence boost), but doesn’t need to be used all of the time.

2) I didn’t give up. I seriously considered calling it a day after the second set, but I stuck with it. It’s better to keep fighting and run a little bit slower than your goal pace than to give up all together. Not every workout goes exactly as planned (pace wise) and I will still benefit from the work that was put in.
3) Daniel and I got in a good workout together. Couples who do LT (lactate threshold) repeats together stay together LT (long-term)! That’s what I decided anyway.

Daniel was not available for a comment or a picture after the workout, so Brooks filled in for him for a post-workout picture. Thanks Brookser!

My legs were incredibly sore from this workout. It felt like I had raced a half marathon or something. I’m not usually that sore from a workout. Now I’m wondering if I actually had some sort of virus or something that was lingering a little bit longer than I realized. Either way, it was bizarre!

Thursday morning Rebecca, Jessica and I had a nice, easy run and came back to a beautiful sunrise over the bay. The mornings are definitely getting a little bit darker (bummer!), but the views are worth it.

Saturday morning I had a 16 mile long run with the last 4 miles up-tempo (with a 6:45 to 7:00 goal range). I ran 12 miles with the group from Running Wild and then headed back out to do the last 4 on my own. It was a bit of a struggle, but I averaged 7:03 for the last 4 miles. I can live with that!

That’s where we are now. I’m pretty much in a run, work, eat, sleep and repeat cycle right now. I’m going to do my best to work posts back into my regular schedule. It just takes me a little while to settle into a good rhythm.

Talk to you soon!